England vs Netherlands: Lauren James saves Lionesses' Euro 2025 chances

Introducing the yo-yo team. For every good performance, they must balance it out with one bad. Once they have got over that, they will reward themselves with another good one. And so it goes, up and down, seemingly ad infinitum, pulled down by gravity but then back up with effort.

It has become a familiar pattern with England. Draw 1-1 with Portugal? No worries, they will beat world champions Spain 1-0. Any team who thrashes Belgium 5-0 would surely get a result against them four days later? Think again, a 3-2 loss is the only logical outcome with this lot.

Fortunately Saturday’s defeat to France meant that England were guaranteed to be on the upward trajectory by Wednesday night.

They comprehensively defeated the Netherlands 4-0 in Zurich to make sure they were masters of their own Euro 2025 fate. A win over Wales on Sunday would see them progress to the knock-out stages.

As quickly as their hopes seemed to have plunged to rock bottom, there they were sliding back into their hands. The yo-yo team.

It was clear on Monday how much England were ready to move on from Sunday.

“I didn’t want to do the press conference today because I’m fed up of talking,” said Georgia Stanway. “I want to put things right on the pitch.” Stanway fired in England’s second goal from the edge of the area in additional time of the first half.

“When you have a disappointing result in football, all you want to do is get back out on the pitch and play again,” said Alessia Russo, the day before the game. She finished the match with three assists and the player of the match award, having run the Netherlands defence ragged.

And then there was Lauren James. Sarina Wiegman had been nonplussed by suggestions that starting James against France had been a mistake.

“I don’t see it as a mistake, it was a choice. If she scored in the first minute, and if the cross where we scored wasn’t disallowed, we’d be having a different conversation,” the England manager said.

We were all having a different conversation after she opened the scoring with a furious strike from the edge of the box. No matter how many times she scores that exact goal, the nonchalance of the way she hits the ball in comparison to the velocity it unleashes is jaw dropping. She calmly celebrated with her hands tucked into the top of her shorts, replicating the ‘Chill Guy’ meme. She is the embodiment of it. She got a second goal in the second half, neatly tucking away a rebound after some haphazard attempts at finishing from her team-mates.

Lucy Bronze had spoken to the team after the match about their experiences at the 2015 World Cup where they lost their first group-stage game, incidentally also against France, before going on to record a third-placed finish, their best ever at a World Cup at the time.

The team also made clear that they were not considering the consequences of a loss heading into the match. Instead the focus was on game plan, and England did look far less nervous when they took to the pitch.

Wiegman made a number of tweaks. Ella Toone, England’s fourth goalscorer, came in as the number 10, whilst Jess Carter and Alex Greenwood swapped positions. James was moved to the right wing, with Beth Mead dropping to the bench, much to the chagrin of fans of lovers-to-enemies stories. The relationship between Mead and her partner, who is Netherlands record goalscorer Vivianne Miedema, appeared to be the main preoccupation of the Dutch press ahead of kick-off. Miedema herself was anonymous and failed to have a single shot.

The changes worked. England dominated from start to finish with the Netherlands only managing one shot on target the entire match. The result was better than England could likely have imagined heading into the match, and the exact kind of performance it seems obvious they should be able to put on, even if it has been concerningly rare that they do.

And this is indicative of the problem England appear to have. The performances are too varied, both individually and as a collective. It is no doubt jarring for opponents to come up against, but that is not a sensible tactical plan. Is Wiegman simply tinkering for the opponent in front of her or does she just not know what her best team is? At the 2023 World Cup, when she switched to a back three at the end of the group stage, she stuck by it until the bitter end. It remains to be seen if that will be the case here.

It is not sustainable to yo-yo through a knockout tournament. At some point, the bad match will come in a game where there is no extra chance to bounce back from it. What England did do is at least give themselves the chance to figure out how to stop it.

Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP